Realtor.com Takes a Swipe at Zillow

According to an article in Housingwire, realtor.com has taken another swipe at Zillow. The online listing company recently completely wrapped a house for sale in Austin, Texas, with wording on the wrapping pointing out that anyone looking for a home on Zillow could be missing out on many properties just like this one.

Just recently, realtor.com has carried out a campaign trying to highlight the fact that it lists many more MLS listed properties that are for sale than Zillow which is its main competitor. As part of this campaign, realtor.com carried out an internal analysis last month that found the company provides at least 300,000 more MLS listed homes in its for sale listings throughout the country compared to Zillow.com. This is roughly 20% more. Zillow has responded to this claim by pointing out that anyone can use available data to portray the story they’d like to tell. In addition, Zillow was keen to point out that Zillow and Trulia’s listings are more comprehensive and more accurate than ever before and that there have been over 350 direct MLS partnerships signed during the past 12 months. Additionally, more than half of real estate categories visits are made to Zillow, a figure that is nearly double that of their nearest competitor.

Realtor.com is operated by Move and in May the company announced that it would spend more than ever before on an advertising and marketing campaign to fight for dominance in this fiercely competitive market. Move has been acquired by News Corp and Zillow and Trulia have merged which has changed the face of online listing and advertising. This advertising and listings are worth in excess of $9 billion.

Buildzoom carried out a lengthy study on both companies and found the combined forces of Zillow and Trulia were able to attract far more web traffic compared to realtor.com, but since realtor.com was acquired by News Corp, the number of unique visitors to the website has been steadily growing. Although Zillow and Trulia get more traffic than realtor.com, these sites have fewer listings in the majority of markets and are losing ground. Apparently Zillow had more than 142 million average monthly unique users visiting its brands during the third quarter of this year.

About Allison Halliday

Allison Halliday is a Realty Biz News contributing writer. She handles International Real Estate and is a seasoned blogger.